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en väsentlig artikel om den till synes eviga frågan: Har något väsentligt i kyrkans doktrin förändrats? Många konservativa hävdar mot bättre vetande att allt är som det alltid varit. Men så är det ju inte.

Från the Tablet: maj 2017
av Sara Maitland

Official teaching has changed throughout the whole history of the Church

I find myself darkly baffled by the – to me bizarre – conviction held by clearly honest and profoundly faithful Catholics – including many theologically well-trained highly placed clerics – that the teaching of the Church cannot change. I am baffled on two levels simultaneously: in the first place it is patently untrue, and more seriously I don’t understand why anyone sane would want it to be true.

Official teaching – not just on ethics, but on fundamental doctrine – has changed (or “developed” to the point that it might more honestly be called changed) throughout the whole history of the Church. Perhaps the most egregious example was in 1014 when Pope Benedict VIII officially inserted the “filioque” clause into the Nicene Creed, in contradiction of the ecumenical councils and in the knowledge that this would be deeply offensive to the Churches of the East. The “procession of the Holy Spirit”, and therefore the “economy” of the Trinity, is a major, central theological issue, part of our primary orthodox understanding of the person and nature of God – and it changed.

The Church has changed its teaching on the geocentric universe. In 1615 the Inquisition declared that heliocentrism was “foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture”. In 1992, after “only” nearly 400 years, John Paul II officially announced that Galileo had been wrongly condemned. Do people who believe that the Church’s teaching cannot change hold out for a pre-Copernican universe?

The Church has changed its teaching on witchcraft more than once. From about the eighth to the tenth centuries it was the belief that witches existed that was wrong, criminal and even heretical. After Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1487, the Church taught that witches did indeed exist, were heretical, could be tortured and should be burned. Not many of even the most conservative Catholics think that now (I hope).

The Church has changed its teaching on which was the first Gospel to be written, on evolution, on slavery, on the morality of trade unionism, on the status of Judaism, on interest on loans, on whether or not women can vote, on whether Origen is a saint and on how long you should fast before receiving Communion (for example!).

And on marriage. For more than half its temporal existence the Western Church has not even been sure if marriage was a sacrament at all. The first official declaration that marriage was a sacrament did not occur until 1184 at the Council of Verona. Until as recently as 1907 a marriage did not need a priest or even any witnesses to be valid. No one (except her ex-husband) seems to have had much problem with Radegund leaving her marriage and taking monastic vows instead; the Church made her a deacon in order to protect her from his attempts to get her back. The Byzantine Emperor gave her a relic of the True Cross and she was canonised very promptly after her death in 587.

But, for me, it is not just that manifestly the Church’s teaching does change (though usually very slowly); I find it delightful, proper and enriching that it changes. This is because both as individuals and particularly as a Church we are in a love-relationship with God; the relationship is – to push language to the deepest level of metaphor and almost to the point of collapse – spousal. And if you talk to two people who have been married, or who have been in love with each other for a long time, they will often speak of “always learning something new about him”, “she can still really surprise me” or “it’s an ongoing conversation – it deepens and deepens”. Such blessed people are talking about a relationship that is dynamic not static, increasing not diminishing, exciting not repressive. It is not that the beloved has “changed” into someone else, it is that our capacity to see, to know, to understand has expanded, refreshed itself.

As so often, Jesus gives us the best images: “Indeed, the water I give you will become a fount of water springing up to eternal life” (John 4:12-14). The water that flows out of a fountain, or natural spring, is never stagnant – the water is fresh and new and yet the fountain is the same fountain each time you drink from it. Or as the Breviary puts it: “You are unchanging, always new” (Prayer during the Day; Friday Week 3). And what is so terrible about that?

Sara Maitland is a novelist and writer.